The Shadow Isle. Katharine Kerr
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does assure me that once before I was the lady of this isle. Avain did recognize me, Mam tells me, on the very day I was born.’ She looked at him with her head cocked a little to one side, and her eyes wide, as if she were expecting him to challenge or dismiss her tale.
‘I’d believe it of Avain,’ Laz said. ‘She’s got a dweomer air about her.’
Marnmara smiled, perhaps relieved that he’d accepted her tale so easily.
‘It’s a great honour,’ Laz said, ‘to have such gifts.’
‘That’s what my mam does say. I get a-weary of it.’
‘What? Why?’
‘The gods have blessed you, she does say, so you must repay them and use your gifts as they wish. If I be the Lady of Haen Marn, then I have many a burden to take up.’ Her voice turned unsteady. ‘Whether I wish to lift them or no.’
‘I see. Well, no doubt you’ll be given the strength when you need it.’
She scowled at the surface of the water, then shrugged, as if she’d hoped for a different answer. Laz wanted to ask more, but he hesitated, afraid she’d resent his prying. She touched the surface of the water in the kettle with one finger, then dipped her hand in.
‘Just cool enough,’ she said. ‘Here, stretch out your hands, Tirn. We’ll have the bandages off.’
Laz gritted his teeth and did as she asked. Her touch was so light that pulling off the thin cloth caused him no pain, but the sight – both his hands were a mass of shiny pink scars. On his left hand the little finger had burned down to a stub of scar tissue, permanently fastened to the finger next to it, both of them useless. On the right hand the last three fingers formed one throbbing mass that he’d lost the power to move. In between the remaining fingers, and between each thumb and the meat of his hands, the flesh oozed a clear fluid as if it wept for its loss.
‘They heal, they heal,’ Marnmara said. ‘But not yet can we leave them be. We’ll do the left hand first.’
Laz plunged his hand into the water. The herb brew stung the oozing wounds like a liquid fire at first, then numbed them, though not quite enough. Marnmara put her own hands in the kettle, caught his, and pried the good fingers apart, one pair at a time, deliberately cracking open the scars to keep the fingers free and usable. As he always did, he swore under his breath the entire time, running through every foul oath he knew in the Gel da’Thae language to keep from fainting and disgracing himself. The right hand took less time and caused him less pain than the left, but by the time she finished, his head was swimming, and the skin of his face felt ice-cold and damp, especially around his mouth.
Marnmara laid his hands on top of the bandages and considered them. A trace of blood oozed between each treated pair of fingers.
‘Not much blood,’ she announced. ‘We’ll leave these open to the air for now.’ She patted his right arm just above the wrist. ‘Go rest.’
‘Gladly.’ Laz got up, steadied himself, and forced out a smile. ‘My thanks.’
He felt like an old man, hunched and staggering, as he made his way across the hall and up the stairs. His small chamber, bare except for a mattress on the floor and a basket for the extra pieces of clothing the women had made him, stood near the head of the stairs. The dragon book lay on the floor by the basket. He went in, shut the door with a nudge of his foot, then lay down and crossed his arms at the wrist over his chest.
‘That’s done for another day,’ he remarked to the hands. ‘Ye gods, I should have listened to Sidro. Don’t, she said, don’t touch the crystals together. Sound advice, but did I listen? Oh no! Not that I should complain, I suppose. What was that my charming mother used to say? Walk behind a mule, and you deserve to get kicked, that’s it.’
The worst thing, he decided, was that he could no longer remember why he’d wanted to bring the crystals together. Obviously it had been a stupid idea, yet he’d felt compelled – the word caught his attention. Compelled. Had some wyrd-dweomer lain inside the pair, waiting for a victim to bring their tips together so they could transport themselves and victim both to this island?
If so, one of them had made the trip safely, though he’d lost the other. He wondered if they might transport him back if he brought them together again. They might take him elsewhere, of course, somewhere far less hospitable than Haen Marn, or burn off the rest of his hands even if he did end up back in the Northlands. He sat up and considered his maimed hands. The idea of trusting himself to the crystals again terrified him. Yet curiosity nagged. Where was the white one, anyway?
After Dougie’s strange vision of the other day, he’d had Marnmara remove the pouch with the crystal from around his neck and put it under the clothing in the basket, hidden from curious eyes. When he tried moving his fingers, he found that he could control them, though it hurt whenever they rubbed against one another. He was healing, indeed, and the thought made him almost cheerful. Carefully, slowly, painfully, he managed to tip the basket over, find the pouch, and shake the black crystal out onto his pillow. In the sunlight coming through the tiny window, it gleamed, but sullenly, or so it seemed to him.
‘I’ll wager you can tell me where your brother lies,’ Laz said.
Laz set the crystal upright and looked down into its tip. He saw nothing at first, then murky images formed – an expanse of brownish grey, a lump of something that might have been wood. Ripples shimmered in the murk. A long narrow head appeared, two tiny eyes, a row of teeth, a neck. The head drew back. A spray of bubbles covered everything. Laz could draw only one conclusion: the white crystal sat at the bottom of the lake, far and forever out of his reach.
‘Good! Rot, for all I care!’
Getting the obsidian crystal back into its pouch, and the pouch into the basket, made his hands throb. Throbbing or no, he decided to put the dragon book somewhere safe rather than leaving it on the floor where Berwynna had placed it. Lifting such a heavy thing – the thought itself pained him. He glanced at the book, then swore aloud.
Just above the cover hovered a thickening in the air. A sprite, perhaps, only half-materialized? Yet the thing had a glow to it that sprites lacked, and an abstract shape. He could discern a disc of some colour that lay just beyond the ordinary colours of the world, an icy lavender? No, stranger still. Was it a spirit at all or some odd vortex of force? He lay down on the mattress to consider it at eye level. As if it knew he studied it, the glow sank into the book and was gone.
Once perhaps Laz might have called to that spirit and inquired about its nature. Now he was afraid, quite simply afraid, to attempt even the most basic dweomer. What if he failed, what if he learned that the enormous power he’d treasured had deserted him? He’d been wounded by the pair of crystals, he realized, his confidence broken as badly as his hands. He’d done a rash, stupid thing that had resulted in the worst pain he’d ever suffered. Worse yet, though, was thinking that the crystals had somehow compelled him, had gained power over him. A sorcerer, are you? he told himself. A pitiful fool, more like! On a tide of such dark thoughts he eventually fell asleep.
Laz woke long after the dinner hour, when the manor of Haen Marn already lay wrapped in silence for the night. During his convalescence hunger had deserted him, not that he’d ever eaten much in any given day. When he sat up, he noticed that the dragon book was glowing again. Ice-white flames, tipped in a peculiar blue, danced on its surface. Spirits. He had to be seeing spirits of Aethyr, he realized, and of a rank far more powerful than any Wildfolk.
‘I want that thing out of here!’
The glow disappeared. They had heard him. He felt sick, not with physical pain, but with shame that he’d turned into a coward. He got up and walked over to the window. Outside the night lay clear and still. Moonlight streaked the water of the loch with an illusory road, heading west. If only I could run along that back to the Northlands! Laz thought. Or if I could fly. He decided that the time had come for him to cast his cowardice aside and see what he could – or could not – do. It’s the only way you’ll ever heal, he told himself.